Matt Jenson with the statue of his hero, Bob Marley, in the background at The Bob Marley Museum in Kingston. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

At 18 years old, Matt Jenson's musical tastes were not much different from his peers in his native New Hampshire: a touch of Southern Rock mixed with the Latin flavour of Santana and the jazz of Thelonius Monk.

But one night he heard Bob Marley's So Much Trouble In The World and was so moved by its rhythms that he was inspired to learn more about the reggae king.

"I remember it was on a radio station up in Maine and it was that part at the bridge when the bass takes over (starts making percussive sounds) and I was like, 'Wow!', because it was jazzy and I was coming from a jazz mentality," Jenson told SunDay Entertainment. "I had heard some reggae stuff and it didn't do that much for me on a harmonics level, but this song had jazz harmonies that just blew me away."

So began Jenson's fascination with Marley's music, which transcends the hero worship of an average fan. The 39-year-old Jenson, an accomplished pianist/organist, is assistant professor of piano at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston where he also conducts a performance studies class, 'The Music and Life of Bob Marley', in which students delve into various facets of the singer/songwriter's legacy.

Jenson is in Jamaica for a series of interviews with persons whose lives have been touched by Marley's music. He has spoken to musicians who worked with him (trumpeter David Madden); those who admire Marley (University of the West Indies lecturers, Barry Chevannes and Michael Witter); and Neville Garrick, who was a member of the singer's inner circle.

Jenson's fact-finding trip was made possible by a grant from Berklee, and is aimed at enhancing the fourth semester of his Marley study group, which starts later this month. Prospective students have to audition for the course with the final cut being 14; alongside much-documented chapters of the Marley story, such as his international rise in the 1970s, Jenson lectures in-depth on dramatic events like the December 1976 assassination attempt on Marley's life and his appearance at the Smile Jamaica concert just days after the shooting.

Students are required to present papers on Marley's life or music. An alternative is submitting arrangements of the singer's songs for performance; ultimately, the class gets to play the music in a live setting.
Most of his students, Jenson said, are Americans between the ages of 18 and 30. Presently, they rehearse 14 songs, many of which are from Marley's 10 albums for Island Records; Jenson said he hoped to expand that list soon.

"We'd like at some point to look at the Studio One stuff, the Trojan stuff or the (Lee) 'Scratch' Perry albums like African Herbsman, which is incredible. In three or four years I'd like to have 60 per cent arranged for a 14-piece band," Jenson explained. Given Berklee's reputation for producing high-calibre musicians, he said that his students found Marley's music challenging.

"There is a lot of reggae music out there in the past 15 years that is simplistic on a musical level, but one thing I love about Marley's music is the bass line," said Jenson. "What I don't hear in modern reggae is the lyrical, singing bass line...a (Aston) 'Familyman' Barrett (Wailers bass player) bass line is a piece of art. A lot of the bass players who audition for my class are sick into 'Familyman'."

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Jenson has taught at Berklee for the past three years. While at NEC, he studied Monk, developed techniques for playing high-level jazz and later studied the blues and Afro-Cuban sounds. In the last 10 years, he has focused mainly on reggae and Marley, paying homage to both on the album One Drops, Spirituals and Riddim.

Jenson's musical resume is remarkable, considering that he grew up in Portsmouth, a remote seaside town in New Hampshire. Trips to his parents' hometown, Boston, introduced him to diverse cultures and by his early teens he was tuned in to Southern Rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, as well as guitar guru Carlos Santana's Latin phrasings and the funk of George Clinton's Parliament.
One of the first things he initiated shortly after getting the job at Berklee was the Marley class. On his second album, scheduled for release this year, Jenson and his students cover two Marley songs: Rebel Music and Kinky Reggae.

Jenson said the 10 songs on this album reflect the influence Marley has had on his life.
"I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she was asking, 'how many rock stars or artistes out there are really committed to telling the truth?'," he said. "She's right, you've got so many of them popping up in things like Digicel commercials. Bob Marley never sold out. That, I think, was his great genius... he never sold out."

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